Trying to erase/partition new SSD drive for my MBP

[muaythai]

I'm swapping out my old drive with a new sold state one. First step is to clone the drive, so I've put my Samsung 500GB SSD in a X-Media USB HDD enclosure. After I plug in drive via USB and the LED lights up, I only get this far:

1. Get error message: “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer"
2. I click “Initialize"Disk Utilities pops up, asks to select disk
3. I chose the external HD icon, named “disk2"All actions under First Aid, Erase, Partition, etc. are greyed out

I ran Disk Utilities from recovery mode and was able to get it to partition, but it error'd out right at the end. Any suggestions?

 

[prisstratton]

I believe that it was suggested elsewhere on this forum (by GGJstudios - if I remember correctly), that you might want to try and reverse the process. That is, install the SSD and put your old HDD in the enclosure. Option boot to the original HDD and clone to the SSD.

I had no problems doing it the way that you attempted, but I have seen this issue pop up a couple of times now, so maybe you want to give this method a try.

 

[prisstratton]

whoops

 

[Gav2k]

Yep as above. Install the drive and boot from old drive in external then use disk utility to cloan the drive to the sdd after formatting it.

 

[muaythai]

I believe that it was suggested elsewhere on this forum (by GGJstudios - if I remember correctly), that you might want to try and reverse the process. That is, install the SSD and put your old HDD in the enclosure. Option boot to the original HDD and clone to the SSD.

I had no problems doing it the way that you attempted, but I have seen this issue pop up a couple of times now, so maybe you want to give this method a try.

Oh wow, ok. Thanks for the suggestion. If you don't mind, can you please tell me what enclosure you used? Thanks!

 

[prisstratton]

Oh wow, ok. Thanks for the suggestion. If you don't mind, can you please tell me what enclosure you used? Thanks!

I did not actually use an enclosure, I used a SATA >> USB adapter kit. Something like this:

http://www.amazon.ca/Startech-Com-U...F8&qid=1433343953&sr=8-8&keywords=sata+to+usb

 

[muaythai]

Awesome, I'm going to get an adapter and try it that way first.

 

[prisstratton]

Awesome, I'm going to get an adapter and try it that way first.

You have already purchased the enclosure so you do not need to spend any more money to get this going. Install the new SSD into the MBP, put the old HDD into the enclosure. Now option boot the system and select to boot from the HDD in the enclosure. Your OS will fire up as normal (yes, it will be a bit slower going through the USB). Now use Disk Utility to prep. the SSD and then perform the clone from the HDD >> SSD. Once complete you just need to reboot and you will be good to go.